{"metadata":{"id":"012320dab0c6450de0ccd44ba859fefa","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/77edcf72-3859-45d5-96be-607d843c88cd/retrieve"},"pageCount":21,"title":"T r a i n i n g o f T r a i n e r s ( T o T ) o n E n h a n c i n g N a t i o n a l C l i m a t e S e r v i c e s ( E N A C T S ) M a p r o o m s f o r U s e r s i n Z a m b i a","keywords":["Zambia","agriculture","climate change","climate variability","food security","capacity development","climatesmart agriculture","climatology","monitoring systems","forecasting","Goal 2 Zero Hunger"],"chapters":[{"head":"1","index":1,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":81,"text":"Ensuring all institutions that play a role in promoting the use of climate information and services are aware of and have the capacity to train users within Zambia on the best-available climate information products for decision-making is critical for building resilience of the agricultural sector.  The training had participation from institutions responsible for generating, translating, and communicating climate information to extend the reach and co-production of climate information to the most local levels and integrate it within decisionmaking processes and planning."}]},{"head":"6","index":2,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":37,"text":"The hands-on, practical training covered climate basics and how to use Maprooms to analyse past, current, and future climate information to meet the needs of adaptive decisionmaking for the agricultural sector in both the near and long-term."},{"index":2,"size":100,"text":"Improved availability and quality of climate data and information has been necessary but not sufficient in the development of effective, decision-relevant, sustainable, and locally-led climate services for the agricultural sector in Zamvia. In particular, while the Zambia Meteorological Department (ZMD) has long produced high quality information available at high resolution, this has not been enough to ensure that it is easily accessed, understood, or able to be used at the sectoral level in decisionmaking for agriculture. Rather, intentional efforts to both promote the translation (contextualization) and transfer (communication) of this information alongside capacity building for its use have been needed."},{"index":3,"size":122,"text":"An important platform for facilitating the access and wider use of climate information in decisionmaking by governments, as well as the public and private sectors, is the IRI's Climate Data Library. The Data Library is a powerful and freely accessible online platform that allows users to view, analyse, download, and share hundreds of terabytes of multidisciplinary climate-related data through a standard web browser (Blumenthal et al., 2014). ICT solutions like this and especially co-created map visualizations such as the IRI's interactive \"Maproom\" visuals and graphs of climate data can play a large role in making climate information more usable by translating past, present, or future conditions into expected impacts and management advisories for different decision-makers (Christel et al., 2018;Daron et al., 2015)."},{"index":4,"size":244,"text":"In Zambia, the Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative has helped the country overcome gaps in its meteorological records by combining quality-controlled station records with proxies (satellite data for precipitation and climate model reanalysis data for temperature) that are freely available from global sources. In doing so, it has enabled the provision of long-term (more than 35 years for rainfall and 50 years for temperature) daily and decadal (10-day) gridded time series data at a 4km resolution. This downscaled location-specific climate information, made possible through the ENACTS approach (Nsengiyumva et al., 2021), represents a huge stride in climate information availability for the country because it is important for informing a wide variety of choices and planning decisions at the farm level in Zambia's various agro-ecological zones, from planting date to cultivar selection, timing of fertilizer application, and other practices affected by the crop calendar (Grossi & Dinku, 2022). However, it is the ensuing activities of the ENACTS initiative that move beyond data availability to promoting its access and use through freely available online visualizations and analyses (\"Maprooms\"), alongside capacity building to promote the use and co-production of new products, that have enabled and will continue enable the information to become locally relevant services at scale. \"Maprooms,\" or visualizations and automations of climate analyses derived from these gridded datasets, in particular, have been instrumental in co-producing and communicating locallyrelevant and demand-driven analyses in the 22 countries where the ENACTS initiative has been implemented, including Zambia."},{"index":5,"size":77,"text":"The training of trainers (ToT) described in this report, which took place from November 7-11, 2022, in Lusaka, Zambia aimed to ensure that all major institutions that play an important role in promoting the use of climate information and services and broader resilience of the agricultural sector are aware of and have the capacity to train users within Zambia on the best-available climate information products for decision-making in ZMD's suite of online \"Maprooms\" (Zambia Meteorological Department, 2022)."},{"index":6,"size":87,"text":"These institutions included the Zambia Meteorological Department (ZMD), which is mandated with generating and devolving climate information for the country's multifarious user communities, as well as the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI), the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment (MGEE), the Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), which play important roles in tailoring, communicating, and otherwise building capacity of users to understand and act on this information in support of climate adaptation."},{"index":7,"size":47,"text":"The ENACTS maproom products which were the subject of the training are freely available through ZMD's website, and provide locationspecific (4 km grid) historical, monitoring, and forecast information that is important for activities related to planning, monitoring, and response for the agricultural sector and wider food system."},{"index":8,"size":110,"text":"The maps, graphs, and other visualizations that comprise the ENACTS maprooms are not premade or ready-made maps but are rather generated live based on the analysis that any user would like to do. Towards its overarching goal of ensuring that institutions playing a role promoting the use of climate information and services in the agricultural sector are aware of and have the capacity to train users within Zambia on the best-available climate information products for decision-making, the workshop aimed to achieve the following: 1) Provide foundational knowledge about climate concepts, data, common data analyses, and the forecast, as well as local and global factors that influence Zambia's climate (climate basics)"},{"index":9,"size":23,"text":"2) Introduce participants to basic analytical tools and visualizations for understanding historical climate (climatology) for any given area of interest (\"Climate Analysis\" maprooms)"},{"index":10,"size":102,"text":"3) Introduce participants to basic analytical tools and visualizations for understanding current climatic conditions (monitoring), including identification of extremes and anomalies (\"Climate Monitoring\" maprooms) 4) Introduce participants to basic analytical tools and visualizations for understanding future climatic conditions (forecasting), including the flexible forecast format for communicating uncertainty for agricultural decision-makers (\"Climate Forecast\" maprooms) 5) Introduce participants to Maprooms for understanding how climate interacts with particular sectors, namely the agricultural sector (\"Climate and Agriculture\" maprooms), and how these Maprooms and the other aforementioned maprooms can be used to answer common questions confronting the agricultural sector, such as crop suitability for a given area."}]},{"head":"2: Approaches and Methods","index":3,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":110,"text":"The workshop was an important forum not only for capacitating trainees on the use of ZMD's ENACTS \"Maprooms,\" but also for promoting and encouraging interactions between those who generate climate information and those who ultimately use it. Pictured here, staff from the Zambia Meteorological Department interface with staff from ZARI, MGEE, WARMA, and the MoA. With an eye towards scaling the use of such products in agricultural decision-making, there was representation from Zambia's agricultural extension system as well. The climate basics and Maprooms covered in this training are part of a wider planned curriculum targeting Zambia's agricultural extension system with critical knowledge and skills to manage climate risk in 2023."}]},{"head":"Awareness of climate information tools such as","index":4,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":33,"text":"Maprooms helps to ensure that the development of new climate services such as Maprooms meets the real and not just perceived needs of the agricultural sector, and that climate services are truly locally-led."},{"index":2,"size":79,"text":"The ToT on ENACTS Maprooms for Users in Zambia provided an important forum for achieving these goals, as well as for promoting interfacing amongst those who produce climate information and products (ZMD) and those who ultimately translate and use them (ZARI, MGEE, WARMA, the MoA.). The still-yet-to-be launched National Framework for Climate Services (NFCS) will help systematize these interactions between actors with different but complementary roles in the development of user-centred climate information and services (Faniriantsoa et al., 2022)."},{"index":3,"size":42,"text":"A full list of participants and their affiliate institutions can be found in Box 1, while the list of trainers and support staff can be found in Box 2. The full agenda for the workshop can be found in Section 6 (Agenda)."}]},{"head":"Staff from the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA), and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) work together on a group exercise to determine the suitability of a hypothetical crop with specific water, temperature, and other requirements in a given location using the Maprooms.","index":5,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":108,"text":"All 18 participants from ZMD, ZARI, the MGEE, WARMA, the MoA, ICRISAT, and IWMI were successfully capacitated on how to access, navigate, and use ZMD's suite of free online Maproom products for analysing past, current, and future climate in relation to the agricultural sector. This was evidenced in a culminating group project and presentation whereby groups of 5-6 people selected a sub-county and created 10-slide PowerPoints to answer a series of questions related to: rainfall and temperature seasonality, La Niña's impact on seasonal rainfall, interpretation of the seasonal forecast, and crop suitability given specific parameters related to total rainfall, temperature tolerance, dry spell tolerance, and wet spell requirements."},{"index":2,"size":23,"text":"Moreover, through presentations from various ZMD staff, the training raised awareness about climate information products beyond ENACTS products that are available through ZMD."},{"index":3,"size":42,"text":"In addition to this, specific feedback on the improvement of existing ZMD Maprooms and development of new Maprooms was gathered. These requests and comments, which will be addressed in 2023 by the IRI and ZMD through the AICCRA project, are outlined below:"}]},{"head":"The Seasonal Climate Forecast Maproom","index":6,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":60,"text":"There was positive feedback on the Seasonal Climate Forecast Maproom and its presentation of the forecast in the flexible forecast format with probabilities of exceedance. In general, participants felt that the ability to see the probability of exceeding any given amount of rainfall (rather than having probabilities lumped into three terciles) was very beneficial and practical for decision-making and planning."}]},{"head":"3: Key Results and Findings","index":7,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":23,"text":"\"I feel like I'm sitting on a pot of gold-There is such a wealth of information in the Maprooms!\" -Kabenuka Munthali, Senior Agricultural"}]},{"head":"The New Python Maprooms","index":8,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":101,"text":"In a move to modernize and improve the ability of others to create and modify Maprooms, the IRI is working to transition the programming language with which they are made from Ingrid to that of Python. While most of ZMD's Maprooms have yet to be translated to Python, trainees at this workshop were exposed to three of ZMD's Maprooms that have already been translated to Python: the Planting and Harvest Decision Support Maproom (also known as the Onset and Cessation Maproom) and the Monthly Climatology Maproom, and the Seasonal Forecast Maproom. Generally, participants found these maprooms more visually appealing and intuitive."},{"index":2,"size":11,"text":"However, participants did make specific requests for improvement of these maprooms:"}]},{"head":"Monthly Climate Maproom","index":9,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":56,"text":"Participants requested that the colour bar of this Maproom have more clearly contrasting colours to show the rainfall gradients (currently, there are just different shades of green). In addition, there are no units or labels included on the legend/colour bar (should be mm of rainfall) below the graphs, which participants requested to clearly label and add."}]},{"head":"For All Maprooms","index":10,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":68,"text":"Many agricultural decisions in Zambia are made at the district level. However, the Maprooms do not have districts labelled. There was an emphatic request by all participants to therefore have districts clearly labelled on the maps, especially those that are downloaded, such that they can be more easily integrated with reports, communications, and other materials, and generally be useful in decision-making at and for the most local levels."},{"index":2,"size":31,"text":"In this same vein, for clarity of visualization, there was a unanimous request to be able to have other regions or districts masked out when one clicks on a certain area."},{"index":3,"size":20,"text":"If you click a location generally, as well, the location name does not come up in the new Python Maprooms."},{"index":4,"size":171,"text":"Lastly, while participants greatly appreciated the ability to download the Maproom outputs, the function to download outputs as a \"geotif\" was not working at the time of the training, resulting in an error message that read \"Error, Page Not Found.\" \"Climate information is very very critical in Zambia. When ZMD produces information and shares it with the agricultural sector, it has to be relevant, and it has to be user-friendly. And, for people to have the demand for it, they need to understand it. We need to transform it.\" For the Climate Monitoring Maproom, participants requested additional information and visuals to contextualize the outputs of this Maproom and more easily aid in interpretation and decision-making. In particular, in the \"Rainfall Anomalies\" output graph for a given location, there was a request to put the anomaly values as percentages of what is expected (the normal) for more context. It is currently unknown, for example, by looking at the graph, if 80 mm of rainfall is good or bad for a given area."},{"index":5,"size":59,"text":"In addition, there are some aspects of the Climate Monitoring Maproom (seasonal) that are not intuitive and should be adjusted. For example, when selecting a beginning and ending dekad for analysis, participants requested that the boxes to enter this information be placed side-by-side, on the same line (currently, one is in the menu bar and one in the graph)."}]},{"head":"Regular and Automated Updates of Underlying Data","index":11,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":65,"text":"While updated data exists up to 2021, there are areas of the ZMD Maprooms where data stops at much earlier years. For example, for all of the \"ENSO\"-related maproom products within the Climate Analysis (historical) tab of the Climate Maproom, the data (temperature, precipitation, etc.) stops at 2014. The data related to Niño is simply missing, but could easily be updating from global data automatically."}]},{"head":"Downloading, Saving, and Sharing Maproom Outputs","index":12,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":56,"text":"Participants had a lot of feedback related to the ease of saving and sharing the Maproom outputs. In particular, if data is able to be delinked from the output products, participants wanted to be able to download maps and graphs within any given Maproom especially as a batch, rather than downloading each output one by one."},{"index":2,"size":68,"text":"In addition to this, participants complained that functions related to downloading Maproom outputs do not function ideally. In particular, when one downloads maps or graphs, the legends/keys must be downloaded separately. Participants requested that the \"Download\" function be automated such that maps/graphs and their corresponding legends are downloaded together (grouped) and with appropriately labelled units such that visuals are self-explanatory with minimum additional editing for use in decision-making."},{"index":3,"size":143,"text":"Lastly, while it is standard on the web to right click an image to download it, if one does this in any Maproom, a right click on a mouse within the Data Library is treated as a left click, and the Maproom will begin recalculating for a new location when all one wanted to do was save an image. Participants requested that this glitch be addressed.  In terms of next steps, the detailed feedback outlined in the Results & Findings section needs to be addressed, including the improvement of existing Maprooms and development of new ones in line with identified priorities. These improvements and additions will be made in early 2023, and then another training will be held with these participants (led by the IRI) to ensure that they are capacitated in the use of these new and improved Maproom products through ZMD."},{"index":4,"size":53,"text":"In addition to this, the ENACTS Maprooms Users Guide for Zambia, which will walk users through the purpose of each of ZMD's Maprooms, as well as how to navigate and use them in great detail, should be completed to support the expanded utilization of these important climate information products in the agricultural sector."},{"index":5,"size":75,"text":"Participants appreciated the hands-on nature of the training and the practical exercises to help them navigate the various Maprooms to answer common questions confronting those who work in the agricultural sector most. For future trainings, they requested that even more exercises be given after each Maproom is presented and explained rather than just at the end for the culminating group project, to better hone their skills and give them more confidence in navigating the tools."},{"index":6,"size":99,"text":"In this same vein, they requested to have more opportunities to present to their colleagues or that the final presentation be conducted as a group (such as with each member of the group presenting 1-2 slides), to ensure they are communicating effectively across sectors and for increased confidence in teaching for the ToTs. It was also suggested that group exercises might be done in pairs (one climate professional and one agricultural professional, for example) to promote interactions and improved communication between those who produce and those who ultimately tailor and promote the use of the climate information and products."},{"index":7,"size":48,"text":"Going forward, therefore, these pedagogical considerations will be taken into account by the IRI and incorporated in future trainings both within Zambia and elsewhere. They should also be incorporated to the extent possible by the trainees when cascading this training through the ToT approach within the participating institutions."}]},{"head":"4: Conclusions and Recommendations","index":13,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":41,"text":"Participants from ICRISAT and the MGEE work together to prepare their final group presentation. The project tied together training on all of the Maprooms by asking trainees to answer specific questions requiring the use of various Maprooms for a given location."}]}],"figures":[{"text":"2 From November 7-November 11, 2022, a five-day training on the use of the Zambia Meteorological Department's Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) Maprooms was implemented in Lusaka, Zambia by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), in collaboration with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). "},{"text":"3A total of 21 participants from ZMD, ZARI, the MGEE, WARMA, the MoA, IWMI, and ICRISAT were capacitated on how to access, navigate, and use ZMD's suite of free online Maproom products for analysing past, current, and future climate in relation to the agricultural sector. Detailed feedback and priorities on the improvement of existing Maprooms and the development of new ones was gathered. to be trained on ZMD's existing suite of free online ENACTS Maprooms. development of new ones was gathered. The participants who were trained on climate basics and ZMD's Maprooms will share the knowledge, skills, and resources gained from the training with their institutional counterparts, following a training of trainers (ToT) approach in Zambia. "},{"text":" Participants of the November 2022 Training of Trainers (ToT) on the Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) Maprooms forUsers pause for a group photo inside the Radisson Blu Hotel in Lusaka, Zambia. "},{"text":"Module 3 : Climate-Sensitive Agricultural Decisions strengthens participants' understanding of the interaction between climate and farm decision-making. It enables them to perform basic analyses of climate-sensitive farm management decisions under uncertainty. A number of factors, in addition to crop and livestock productivity, influence farm management decisions, particularly at seasonal and longer time scales. To equip participants Participants from the Zambia Meteorological Department (ZMD) practice navigating through different \"Maproom\" products available for the agricultural sector during a November 2022 training of trainers on the topic. The training provided an important opportunity for ZMD to interact with key institutions in the agricultural sector to better understand their climate information needs. ** **************************************************************** "},{"text":"6) Gather feedback for the improvement of existing Maprooms and the development of new Maprooms for the agricultural sector in 2023.The workshop was a training of trainers (ToT) of national ZMD staff, as well as other relevant staff from the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI), the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment (MGEE), the Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). It also included staff from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in order to examine how the Data Library and Maproom products might be integrated with the national ag-data hub currently under development through the AICCRA project. "},{"text":" ************************************************************* The Climate Monitoring Maproom "},{"text":" ************************************************************* "},{"text":"  "},{"text":"  "},{"text":"  "},{"text":"  "},{"text":" AICCRA Climate Risk Management in Agricultural Extension Refresher Training • 14 ** ** \"It is my wish that \"It is my wish that every person who is every person who is offering extension offering extension services or advisory services or advisory services have a taste services have a taste of what these of what these Maprooms are, Maprooms are, because the because the maprooms can help maprooms can help inform not only inform not only themselves, but also themselves, but also the farmers to the farmers to improve the kind of improve the kind of farming they are farming they are doing.\" doing.\" -Dominic Namanyungu, -Dominic Namanyungu, Principal Extension Principal Extension Methodologist, Zambian Ministry Methodologist, Zambian Ministry of Agriculture of Agriculture  "}],"sieverID":"d237cd9f-f043-4620-a87e-447e59350a78","abstract":"A five-day training of trainers (ToT) workshop was implemented from November 7 to November 11, 2022, in Lusaka, Zambia by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) in collaboration with the Zambia Meteorological Department (ZMD) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). The workshop, which was organized as part of the World Bank's Accelerating the Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project, brought together 18 participants from the Zambia Meteorological Department (ZMD) alongside the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI), the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment (MGEE), the Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) to be trained on ZMD's existing suite of free online ENACTS Maprooms. The major objective of the workshop was to ensure that each of these institutions that play an important role in promoting the use of climate information and services and broader resilience of the agricultural sector are aware of and have the capacity to train users within Zambia on the best-available climate information products for decision-making. The ENACTS maproom products, which are freely available through ZMD's website, provide location-specific (4 km grid) historical, monitoring, and forecast information that is important for activities related to planning, monitoring, and response for the agricultural sector and wider food system."}